The Morning After: Friday, November 17th 2017

At last night’s big Semi event, Elon Musk and Tesla had a special surprise, a prototype of the company’s next Roadster. A follow-up to its original EV, the new car is a four-seater with a removable roof, a 200kWh battery capable of going 620 miles, and incredible performance specs. With a claimed 0 – 60 MPH time of 1.9 seconds, 8.9 second quarter mile and top speed of over 250 MPH, Musk claims it will be the fastest production car ever. The only problem? It’s not coming out until 2020, and getting in line for a pre-order will cost $50k of the $200,000 base price, or $250,000 up front for a limited “Founders Edition” model.

Tesla also showed off its Semi, an all-electric big rig with a 500 mile range, plus Enhanced Autopilot technology. Inside, a pair of Model 3 displays inform the driver of what’s going on, while its four independent motors are powerful enough for a 0 – 60 time of 5 seconds when empty, and 20 seconds while hauling 80,000 pounds of cargo. It’s supposed to start production in 2019.

The Surface Book 2 is one of the most powerful and well-designed Windows laptops on the market. And thanks to its improved hinge, it doesn’t feel any different than a traditional notebook. It’s the best MacBook Pro competitor we’ve seen yet. Check out our full review.

The OnePlus 5T is official — and it’s at once everything you expected and a bit more. The centerpiece, as you’ve no doubt guessed, is the 6-inch, 2,160 x 1,080 AMOLED display — and that sub-$500 price. The fingerprint reader is now on the back as a result of the taller screen, but it means a larger canvas for your apps and videos in a device that’s roughly the same size as its predecessor. Compared to the not-that-old OnePlus 5, we’re getting a device that looks decidedly more modern — we’ve already taken it for an early spin.

A team of astronomers have discovered an Earth-like exoplanet that’s only 11 light-years away and is one of the most potentially habitable celestial bodies we’ve ever come across. Ross 128 b’s star doesn’t emit as much solar flare as the Proxima Centauri, so it’s not as exposed to deadly ultraviolet and X-ray radiation that destroy life. In addition, it could still have an atmosphere to support life, since its slow rotation and weak magnetic activity means its atmosphere isn’t likely to erode that quickly.

An anti-piracy alliance supported by many major US and UK movie studios, broadcasters and content providers has dealt a blow to the third-party Kodi add-on scene after it successfully forced a number of popular piracy-linked streaming tools offline. In what appears to be a coordinated crackdown, developers including jsergio123 and The_Alpha, who are responsible for the development and hosting of add-ons like urlresolver, metahandler, Bennu, DeathStreams and Sportie, confirmed that they will no longer maintain their Kodi creations and have immediately shut them down.

But wait, there’s more…

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